Every landfill in America is a gas factory. As organic waste decomposes beneath layers of compacted soil, it produces a steady stream of biogas — roughly half methane, half carbon dioxide, laced with trace compounds. Left uncaptured, that methane escapes into the atmosphere, where it traps heat at roughly 80 times the potency of CO2 over a 20-year horizon. But captured, cleaned, and upgraded, that same gas becomes renewable natural gas (RNG) — pipeline-quality fuel made from waste that was going to decompose anyway.
In August 2025, the American Biogas Council released numbers that should have been front-page news: the United States now operates 589 landfill biogas facilities, an 18.5% increase since 2020. More than 90 new facilities have been commissioned in just five years. Capital investment exceeded $1 billion per year in both 2023 and 2024. And the single-year capacity increase in 2024 — 56.3 billion cubic feet — was the largest on record, greater than the combined additions from 2019 through 2022.
This is not a niche technology. This is an industry in full sprint.
The Numbers That Matter
America's landfill biogas facilities now capture 521 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of gas annually — enough energy to meet the electricity needs of 3.3 million homes or fuel 5.2 million passenger vehicles. Of that total, approximately 40% is now upgraded to RNG for pipeline injection, up from just 19% in 2020. The remaining 60% — about 312.5 Bcf — is still used for direct electricity generation or heating, powering roughly two million households.
The shift toward RNG has been dramatic. Of the 92 landfill biogas facilities that opened since 2020, 77 produce RNG — not electricity, not direct heat. That's 84% of new builds choosing the higher-value product. Today, landfill RNG capacity totals about 540.5 Bcf per year, enough energy to fuel 2.1 million passenger vehicles annually.
The publicly traded company Montauk Renewables (NASDAQ: MNTK) offers a window into the economics. Operating 11 RNG projects across four states plus two renewable electricity facilities totaling 29.1 MW, Montauk produced 5.6 million MMBtu of RNG in 2025 on $176.4 million in revenue. Their design capacity sits at approximately 32,922 MMBtu per day. The company is expanding: a new Apex landfill facility (2,100 MMBtu/day) came online in mid-2025, and the Bowerman project (3,600 MMBtu/day) is targeted for 2027.
What's Left on the Table
Here's the part that should make infrastructure investors and policymakers sit up straight: the EPA's Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) identified 741 municipal solid waste landfills that merit biogas facility development. As of September 2024, only 488 landfills provide gas to energy projects, for a total of 542 operational projects. That means hundreds of landfills are producing methane with no beneficial capture whatsoever — the gas is either flared (burned with no energy recovery) or, worse, vented directly to the atmosphere.
The American Biogas Council estimates that sites currently under development or identified for potential development could provide an additional 1.8 trillion cubic feet of biogas available for capture each year — enough to power 11.3 million additional homes or fuel 17.6 million more vehicles. The 27 facilities under construction and 79 in planning represent the visible pipeline, but the real opportunity dwarfs even that.
Meanwhile, the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Inventory reported that landfill methane emissions reached 119.8 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent in 2022 — the third consecutive year of decline, yes, but still making landfills the third-largest source of U.S. methane emissions after livestock and natural gas systems. The Rocky Mountain Institute estimates American landfills emit roughly 3.7 million metric tons of methane annually, equivalent to 295 million metric tons of CO2 on a 20-year warming basis.
Every ton of that uncaptured methane represents both an environmental liability and a wasted energy asset.
The Data Center Question
The timing of the landfill RNG boom collides with another infrastructure story: America's insatiable appetite for data center power. U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023 — 4.4% of all U.S. electricity — and that number is climbing fast. Industry projections peg data center power capacity at around 30 gigawatts in 2025, potentially tripling to 90 GW by 2030. The EIA forecasts the strongest four-year growth in U.S. electricity demand in two decades, driven substantially by data centers.
The hyperscalers — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta — are scrambling for clean, reliable baseload power. They're signing nuclear power purchase agreements, building solar farms, and hunting for any energy source that doesn't require years of transmission line permitting. Landfill gas won't single-handedly power a 100 MW data center campus, but it can contribute meaningfully — especially for smaller edge facilities, on-site generation at adjacent properties, or pipeline-injected RNG that displaces fossil gas in the broader energy mix.
Pennsylvania leads the nation in annual landfill biogas capture capacity at 56.6 Bcf per year and hosts three of the ten largest facilities nationally. California ranks first in operating facilities (55) and total capital investment ($1.4 billion). Texas, Michigan, and Illinois round out the top contributors, with Illinois adding the most new capacity from 2023 to 2025. These are not random locations — they correlate with major data center markets, population density, and waste generation.
The Economics of Garbage Gas
The financial picture is encouraging but not simple. Montauk Renewables' 2025 results illustrate the challenge: revenue held flat at $176.4 million while net income dropped to $1.7 million as Renewable Identification Number (RIN) prices fell 29% to $2.33 per credit. The company invested $116.5 million in capital expenditures and took on $126 million in debt to fund expansion. Adjusted EBITDA declined from $42.6 million in 2024 to $35.6 million in 2025.
This is the central tension in landfill RNG economics: the projects require significant upfront capital, the gas cleanup and upgrading technology is complex, and revenue depends heavily on credit markets (the federal Renewable Fuel Standard and state programs like California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard) that can shift with political winds. When RIN prices are strong, landfill RNG projects are highly profitable. When prices soften, margins compress quickly.
Still, the industry sees a clear path forward. Montauk is guiding 2026 revenue of $175-190 million from RNG alone, with production of 5.8-6.1 million MMBtu. Their renewable electricity segment is expected to nearly double to $35-41 million in revenue as the Tulsa facility conversion comes fully online. Capital continues to pour into new projects — the $1 billion per year in 2023-2024 is real money committed by real developers who've done the math.
State-Level Leadership
The geography of the RNG boom tells its own story. States with strong waste sectors and supportive policy frameworks are leading. Texas, California, Illinois, Idaho, Washington, Wisconsin, and Florida each saw over $100 million in biogas project investment in 2025. California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which pairs with the federal RFS to create stacked incentives for RNG in transportation fuel, has been particularly effective at driving development.
But the RNG Coalition and industry groups argue the market needs diversification beyond vehicle fuel. Fleet operators who were early adopters of RNG-powered trucks are largely committed — the vehicle fuel market is approaching saturation in some regions. New demand must come from pipeline injection for general grid use, industrial process heat, and, increasingly, power generation. The policy frameworks that enabled the transportation RNG market need equivalents for electricity and thermal applications.
Build It Right, From the Waste Up
At the EPR Foundation, we see landfill RNG as a defining "Build It Right" opportunity. This is infrastructure that solves multiple problems simultaneously: it captures a potent greenhouse gas that would otherwise escape, it produces domestically sourced energy from waste that already exists, it creates construction and operations jobs in communities that host landfills, and it generates revenue for municipalities and waste management operators.
The 741 candidate landfills identified by the EPA represent known, quantifiable energy reserves beneath our feet. The gas is being produced right now, today, whether we capture it or not. The technology works — 589 facilities prove that. The capital markets are willing — over $2 billion invested in two years confirms that. What's needed is the policy certainty and market structure to close the gap between what exists and what's possible.
"Landfill biogas facilities are a smart way to create more beneficial energy for America and provide jobs in communities across the country," said Patrick Serfass, Executive Director of the American Biogas Council. "We expect growth in this sector to continue as more and more landfill owners seize the opportunity to utilize the gas produced from our waste for beneficial use."
We agree. And we'd add this: in a country arguing about how to power its future, the answer is partly buried in the ground, producing gas as you read this. The question isn't whether the technology works. It's whether we'll capture what's already there.
Sources: American Biogas Council (August 2025 report), EPA Landfill Methane Outreach Program database (September 2024 update), EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory (2024 report, 2022 data), Rocky Mountain Institute (waste methane analysis), Montauk Renewables SEC filings and earnings reports (2024-2025), EIA electricity demand forecasts (January 2026), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data center projections, Biomass Magazine.